Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK • Hacker News Board

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#31

Post by freehunter » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 5:24 PM UTC

robotmay wrote: post #10

freehunter wrote: post #3

Hopefully this brings more control over the production by the RPi team. If something is going wrong, it's a lot easier to take a trip down the M4 (or the train) than it is to fly to China and sort things out.

I wouldn't be so sure of that with the currently absurd amount of roadworks on the M4 ;)

Being infatuated with Top Gear, I have to imagine your name means you are an AI that James May built to do the boring things humans do like spend time online while he's away in the garage or doing another special on planes. Therefore, with you being an extension of Mr May, I have to say I agree with your proposal to charge councils by the minute for not having roadworks done properly. Imagine how well funded the Raspberry Pi Foundation would be with just one trip from Cambridgeshire to Wales!

http://www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-road-pricing-2...

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#32

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 5:26 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #28

andrewcooke wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"bleem"?

It's clear from context that it's a perfectly cromulent word.

[deleted]

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#33

Post by freehunter » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 5:28 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #28

andrewcooke wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"bleem"?

It's clear from context that it's a perfectly cromulent word.

True, but using unusual words embiggens the chance that your audience might not understand. The only regular use of bleem Google finds is for a PS1 emulator.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#34

Post by Shish2k » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 5:28 PM UTC

andrewcooke wrote: post #26

oliwarner wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree but it's not just wages and taxes. China has everything they need to bleem out consumer electronics indefinitely. They source the materials within China and they produce [most of] the components in China. It's all there under one currency. I love England but we don't really have the rare earth metals required to do this stuff. We need to import them and that means paying China more money. Often mor…

"bleem"?

I imagine when your production rate is measured in KHz, that's what it sounds like

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#35

Post by eru » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 5:28 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #19

simonbarker87 wrote: post #4

This is great news for RPi team and for uk manufacturing. I've been saying for over a year now that if there is a reasonable level of automation then there is no reason why china should be cheaper than the uk.so long as you can maintain a robust supply chain of components (I should think using a sony facility is beneficial to this) then it can work out great. We priced our product for uk and china and china was infac…

I completely agree but it's not just wages and taxes. China has everything they need to bleem out consumer electronics indefinitely. They source the materials within China and they produce [most of] the components in China. It's all there under one currency. I love England but we don't really have the rare earth metals required to do this stuff. We need to import them and that means paying China more money. Often mor…

> I agree that this is something that needs to happen eventually. If the world keeps paying China to make everything they will end up owning us all. On paper they probably already do.

That's too pessimistic. Broaden your horizon away from the British (and perhaps US) example. The German economy is doing fine for manufacturing, but they have no qualms about importing from China at all.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#36

Post by enjo » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 5:46 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #28

andrewcooke wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"bleem"?

It's clear from context that it's a perfectly cromulent word.

That is quite possibly the perfect reply. Are you an englishman by chance? Because the level of snark is just perfect:)

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#37

Post by hosh » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 5:50 PM UTC

mappingbabel0 wrote: post #6

I spoke with Raspberry Pi about this for a news story I wrote. They said this about manufacturing: "The temptation is always to push manufacturing to a low-cost region, but I think with the right attention to detail there's no reason British manufacturing can't compete in a global marketplace," Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "It shows that British manufacturing can be co…

There was an article I read about how US manufacturing are making a comeback, but mostly in bespoke manufacturing that requires a lot of automation and technology.

On the other side, there is the story of the man who tried to source all of his solar panel parts in the US. He's actually having difficulty doing this (supply chain issues).

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#38

Post by adestefan » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 5:52 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #35

oliwarner wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree but it's not just wages and taxes. China has everything they need to bleem out consumer electronics indefinitely. They source the materials within China and they produce [most of] the components in China. It's all there under one currency. I love England but we don't really have the rare earth metals required to do this stuff. We need to import them and that means paying China more money. Often mor…

> I agree that this is something that needs to happen eventually. If the world keeps paying China to make everything they will end up owning us all. On paper they probably already do. That's too pessimistic. Broaden your horizon away from the British (and perhaps US) example. The German economy is doing fine for manufacturing, but they have no qualms about importing from China at all.

Manufacturing in the US is also very strong, might even be the highest it's ever been. The, so called, problem is that it doesn't really hire as many people as it used to due to automation.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#39

Post by adestefan » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 5:55 PM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #11

mappingbabel0 wrote: post #6

I spoke with Raspberry Pi about this for a news story I wrote. They said this about manufacturing: "The temptation is always to push manufacturing to a low-cost region, but I think with the right attention to detail there's no reason British manufacturing can't compete in a global marketplace," Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "It shows that British manufacturing can be co…

Yes, it's actually a White House talking point this week: "Since February 2010, the U.S. manufacturing sector has added roughly 500,000 jobs, the fastest pace of job growth in the sector since 1995".

There's a difference in measuring manufacturing by the number of jobs, the number of widgets created, or the value of the widgets created. The value of the widgets created is at the highest point it's ever been in the US.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#40

Post by drone » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 5:59 PM UTC

jcollins1991 wrote: post #30

drone wrote: post #29

I don't understand this statement at all: "Last year, when nobody had heard of the Raspberry Pi, we had been unable to find a British manufacturer whose prices per unit (especially at a point where we were thinking of sales in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands you’re seeing now) would work for us, and who believed that the project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us." Wh…

The key point I think is line space. Getting set up for production is quite a bit of work, and given that their new contract is for 30,000/month, the manufacturers clearly didn't want to set up an entire production line if they may only get a couple of months of usage out of it (since the original order would've been only in the tens of thousands).

That is the key thing I question and makes me wonder about EMS in the UK. There are literally dozens of vendors who would kill for that job here in the States - even without any guarantee of repeat order. There just must not be very many there in the UK.

(I do understand some of what it takes to setup and run a manufacturing line, I work with several EMSes both in the US and China and run a [smaller scale] electronics manufacturer.)

Edit: Before my comment is taken the wrong way, what I am wondering is if the UK has much capacity for mid-scale EMS/CEM, or if the industry there has been largely tailored towards the very big players. But, I'm pretty sure I misread the statement, namely that they meant that the only places willing to take the jobs were charging too much, rather than that no one wanted the job because it was too small.